Roses
by Salsa like Salome
Summary: An Amelie vignette. While vacationing in Southern France, Amelie stumbles upon a situation that contradicts her timid nature. Answer to a fanfic challenge.


Title: Roses  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Amelie. I don't even speak French.  
  
A/N: This little bit of fluff was the answer to a challenge in a writing community on livejournal. You had to pick a movie character that you had never written anything about, and put them in a set situation ( on vacation, returning to a hotel, when they happen upon a man attacking a helpless woman ). They had to act accordingly and stay in character. I chose Amelie Poulain, and here is my answer. I hope you like. Sparrow's Flight is coming, I just have quite a bit of stuff on my plate at the moment. This was a bit of escapist fun. Hope you enjoy!  
  
Roses  
  
For the first time in her life, Amelie Poulain was away from home. The universe that had consisted of Paris, her father's house and the vast plains of her imagination had now expanded, scooping the town of Evian in Southern France into its embrace. Amelie didn't mind that the place was so commercial, or that it was stuffed to the point of suffocation with tourists of every age and ethnicity. She treated the town and the change as she treated all things: observed them at a respectful distance and remained quietly fascinated.  
  
"Four euros, if you please." Amelie started, pulling her eyes from a trio of American teenagers as they passed on the promenade. She turned back to the ice cream vendor while a hand delved into the confines of a pocket of her navy pea coat, extracting the proper coins and holding them out to the man with the timid flicker of a smile. He had a moustache, crow's feet and graying temples, and his voice reminded her of a mall Santa Clause. He probably smelled of maple syrup. She nodded her thanks, surveying him with an inconspicuously childlike gaze before she turned. Phillipe, read his nametag. Phillipe, husband and father of three; Phillipe, ice cream vendor by day, private eye by night. Amelie preferred the latter, and so that is what he became.  
  
The cobblestones had changed to asphalt beneath her ballet flats, and now cobblestone again. Her fingers worked at the wrapping of her ice cream bar absently, thoughts meandering behind large black eyes. For years she had attempted to make her father travel, and only when she succeeded did she realize that she had never thought it an option for herself. The apartment that she and Nino shared was all she had known and required of comfort, and Paris fascinated her ceaselessly. It seemed the stars were different every night. She folded the wrapper and slipped it into her pocket. But when he had asked her for a holiday she consented, only if her promised not to take her too far, and only because he was Nino. Nino who was waiting for her at the hotel with champagne and soft lips, waiting to press kisses on her eyelids and murmur nonsense in her ear until she fell asleep wrapped in his arms and his scent. She would awake with the lingering dreams of knights and damsels with his and her faces. Perhaps I should buy him flowers, she thought. But it was too late for that and Nino would have to take her empty-handed. He had never minded before. She passed a shop window before turning onto the narrow street of her hotel, and the mannequins stirred and breathed contented sights at this strange black haired girl who wore her romantic notions in her private smile and the delicate twirl of her polka-dot skirt.  
  
Le Hotel Fleurie was nestled at the crest of the hill, and Amelie was halfway to it when she heard the noises of struggle followed by a whimpered cry for help. She froze and sucked in a breath, unaware that she had dropped her uneaten confection. She was exactly the wrong person for these situations, she was only a warrior within the pages of books. It came from the next alley, and Amelie moved toward it with the impossible quiet of one who is unspeakably frightened, like a rabbit that has realized it is being stalked by predators. She could see them now, and she would have fought the urge to turn had she remembered how to move. The woman was small and slight, youthfully pretty and crowned by golden hair that rippled in her distress. Her blue eyes were wet. A black shoulder bag lay a few feet removed, its straps broken, and three or four dozen roses were strewn about, some crushed by the careless boots of her attacker. She sold flowers.  
  
He was much larger, wearing an expression as hardened and beaten as his nondescript jeans and jacket, his brown hair disheveled. He had pulled a knife, its glint sinister in the dying sunlight. Amelie drew back against the wall, crushing her eyelids shut, a shaken exhale barely audible against the noise of the two. I'm imagining them, thought Amelie. I imagine half the things I see. But when the sounds of their fight didn't die, she was forced to accept reality and likewise act. She slid her hands into her pockets, feeling the ice cream wrapper in one and a pen in the other. She drew them out without hesitation, placing the pen beneath her teeth and tearing the wrapper in half. Uncapping the pen with her mouth, she turned to face the wall, placing half the wrapper against the brick, white side up. With the precise haste of one who has no time and very few ideas, Amelie scrawled a message and crumpled the wrapper within a fist, knuckles white. She peered into the alley again, eyeing the man's thigh. With a wordless prayer she closed her eyes and heaved the wad, darting behind her wall with a soldier's fleetness the moment she saw her missile hit. Her lids were hammered shut again, breathing forgotten in the wake of prayer. Please let it work, please let it work. The noise of the scuffle had stopped.  
  
"What the." his voice was surprisingly smooth, if not astonished, like one of literature's many traitorous best friends. He stopped and picked up the thing that had hit his hip, a wad of. ice cream wrapper? He unfolded it slowly after a moment's hesitation, like an archeologist handling a baffling, potentially dangerous find. Something was written on the white side. His lips mouthed it absently as he read, only because it made no sense.  
  
"Curiosity kills nine out of ten cats." Nonsense. He studied it for a moment, a brow ascending, and was about to toss it over his shoulder and return to victimizing when a second wad rolled into the alley, stopping at his feet. One fist closed around the first message as her bent to pick up the second, expression beyond discombobulation. This one was written on the second half of the same wrapper, in the same pleasantly loopy, legible print.  
  
.And leaves the rest bruised and unconscious. The attacker hadn't even begun to ponder this when a sharp thwack sounded, followed by a low groan. He crumpled to his knees and fell forward, quite unconscious. His victim stood breathless over him, still holding a wooden rod aloft, plucked from the wreckage of a rocking chair next to the refuse bin behind them in the alley. At its entrance, Amelie finally let herself breathe. She peered in, watching the woman drop the rod and begin collecting her roses in mild shock. Relief darted across Amelie's lips before she turned back into the street, trotting across the cobblestone towards her hotel.  
  
"Wait!" Amelie stopped and turned, dark eyes slightly quizzical. The woman was jogging towards her, the straps of her bag tied and shouldered, arms full of roses. She halted in front of Amelie, and the silence that followed was filled with the most sincere form of thanks. She extended half a dozen roses, finally remembering how to smile.  
"Thank you," whispered the woman. Amelie took the flowers carefully, nodding briefly, her version of mingled thanks and encouragement written across her lips. The woman performed an odd curtsey and there was another full silence before the two silently turned and parted ways. Amelie was still smiling when she mounted the steps of the hotel. Nino would get his flowers after all. 


End file.
